18. 'The face ¹ of the deep' is that person's desires and resulting falsities, of which he consists and in which he is completely absorbed; and because he has no light at all he is like the deep, or something thoroughly obscure. Throughout the Word such people are also called 'the deep' and 'the depths of the sea' which are dried up or laid waste until a person's regeneration starts, as in Isaiah,

Awake as in the days of antiquity, the generations of long ago. Was it not You that did dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; making the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to go across? Let the ransomed of Jehovah return. Isaiah 51:9-11.

Furthermore, when looked at from heaven, this kind of person resembles a darkened mass with no life to it. The same expressions embody within them in general the vastation in man, described many times by the Prophets, which precedes regeneration. For before a person can know what truth is, or be moved by good, the things that hinder and offer resistance must be removed. Thus the old man must die before the new one can be conceived.

Footnotes:

7987. 'Even on this same day it was' means that it was at that very time. This is clear from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 2788, 3462, 3785, 4850, 5672, 5962, 7680. 'On this same day' consequently means in that state, and so at that very time, that is to say, when the Lord's Coming took place, meant by 'at the end of the four hundred and thirty years', and the deliverance of those belonging to the spiritual Church, meant by 'all the hosts of Jehovah went out of the land of Egypt'.